Thursday, January 31, 2013

"News"

Simple Cuusoo Site update

Cuusoo has a "Blog" button now between "Discover" and "My Page." They don't often publish but when they do it is usually significant.

Marble Run testing

Peterj of the Marble Run and Star Wars Marble Run projects has done some testing to ally some of the concerns for his design. He has a video showing that a ball dropped from a height of 2 bricks going down a 5 stud long incline will travel in excess of 40 studs. Still curious as too how well they will preform going into the curves but that is a lot more distance than I would have imagined.

Tiny Trucks on a Tear!

Following a notice on the Cuusoo Facebook page and article in Brickset the Tiny Tricks have surged in support gathering over 200 support since Sunday. They are currently set up for very good placement in this week's leaderboard and a well deserved spot it is.

Not on the List? First, I tend to cut off projects after a certain day count, usually 10k. Additionally, I only monitor projects that have at least 200. Projects less than that are a little too volatile for proper assessment. Finally, I track several weeks worth of data to get these numbers, so you might not show up until your project has been post 200 for a few weeks.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

So, I have been thinking of expanding a bit on this site into talking a bit about cool thing people are trying to get made.

I was going to give it some more serious thought before my first post in this vein but had somehow missed this Fate Core kickstarter until the last few hours. Currently there are less than 5 hours left.

If you spend $1 you get a whole gaming system. If you spend $10 you get 14 expansions.

The Fate system is as much of a game as it is a system for collaborative story telling.

Players define their characters by a set of core concepts, and with those concepts they can manipulate the story as they play by spending and aquiring fate. The DM can persuade characters to follow their narrative by giving them fate, or taking it away.

I am sorry I don't have more time to share with you just how cool the system is before you need to decide about it but I can tell you, if you are at all into rpg gaming, it will be one of the best dollars you ever spent. If you go in for the $10 backing you will be getting $70 of gaming content.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Cuusoo dealing with Bugs

Many people do not realize this but there appears to be a separate Cuusoo database for their "reports" that they use on their discovery page. This will sometimes lag behind real time by a minute or two. So if you do a search for a project you might see that it has 534 support but when you go to the project you see that it has more.

Well, whatever code base they have for updating the "discovery" database has not been working for the last few days. So, the support levels are our of synch and there is not indication of new projects, except for the "right now" page.

This has had very little impact on the surge of votes for Poptropica though, as there is an external site funneling supporters directly to the project.

Update: Bug has been resolved, but for today, the "daily support" sidebar is showing all the support since the bug started, not a single day of support.

British Invasion Faltering!!!

The Spice Girls project has been deleted. There are three things that usually will terminate a project ahead of time. The project is deleted by its creator, the project is archived by Cuusoo due to an aspect fo the project, or the project is found to be plagiarized, which results in its deletion by Cuusoo.

As this project has not notice of being archived, then it can be assumed that Cuusoo did not choose to take the project down for brand fit, licensing, or similar issues. It is also unlikely that the project creator plagiarized the project as those are usually caught quite early on. It is therefore most likely that the creator has chosen to self delete, and the reasons for that are very expansive.

Pick of the Week

It was a hard choice this week but in the end I decided to go with the project that looked like the most fun.

At first I was shying way from this project because of my lack of familiarity with the subject matter but I have taken a serious look and the build has quality content. The elements really nail the humorous aspect Lego often tries to bring to their builds. The figure looks great too. The giant bunny could use some work, but hey, it's a giant mecha bunny.

On top of all that, the presentation is top of the line and the subject is ideal for a successful Cuusoo project. For those unfamiliar with Poptropica, as I was prior to this project, it is apparently an MMO targeted at young people. This does make me wonder how many of the votes are legitimately from 13+ users but I assume a parent would be willing to support the project for their kids if asked.

Regardless, youths are more likely to buy into the wishful thinking aspect of Cuusoo and vote with their hearts, and spread the word about the project, unlike the projects targeted at more mature audiences where more critical fans support only project that they think are "viable."

So, fun looking build with some entertaining play features, great presentation, and a perfect subject for a viable, engaged, audience.

Honorable Mentions

I very nearly picked this as my project for the week. These five micro-houses are a great homage to the creator
series of houses and quite charming in their own right. I especially
like the solar panels and the patio on the side of the building. All in
all though I find the house with dark blue roof the most appealing.

The concept of the project is really great. Integrating the dynamic aspects of a marble run with the fun constructability of Lego and tying in the undeniable appeal of Star Wars. Unfortunately this project, as designed, does require several custom parts, but I think some creative Lego use could overcome a few of these issues. Also I do wonder about the physics of many of these tracks and would like very much to see some prototypes to confirm that a rolling ball will make it across the long, unslopped runways without running out of kinetic energy.

Regardless of any of these particulars, I think the concept is a fine one and I would love to see what Lego would do with a marble run.

Peterj has posted similar projects before without the Star Wars theme integrated for those who like the marble run concept but not the Star Wars approach.

This craft is very appealing with some great curvature and flow. The colors combination of white, light grey and trans blue work well together. Looks very swooshable and I really appreciate the trans-clear stand.

If
this existed I know I would eventually obtain one, likely as a gift
though. I imagine the mark up would be pretty high relative to a
standard tape measure and I don't mind doing the math to convert.

On
top of that, Cuusoo is not really for non-Lego builds, but what does
that matter really. If you like this concept go support it.

A nice modular but it suffers from not quite living up to the modulars it is based on. The building has some good features but it is ultimately too repetitive on the external qualities. The internals suffer the same issue where repetition is used to fill space rather than creativity.